Welcome to EEN’s new website. Let me show you around.

As EEN’s digital manager, I’m really excited that this website has been launched. It’s the culmination of hard graft and rounds and rounds of checking in with users to give us what you see today, along with a steady stream of enhancements planned once it's had a chance to live a bit.

Starting with user needs

It’s easy to structure a website and its content the way we want it, but that isn’t necessarily how our audiences want to consume it.

Extensive primary and secondary research has given us a tight segmentation of our audiences and understanding of what makes them tick. Everything on the site points back to that, be it a broad piece of content or something very niche.

In fact, that process saw us tweak our vision…

We want to transform the future of ambitious businesses by empowering their innovation and global growth.

…and clarify the value we add

Remove barriers to growth (experience, money, knowledge, connections)

Proven, safe and credible public-funded service stimulating the economy

Open new markets and opportunities for UK businesses

Clarity in a complex world of business support

…to further focus the content on this website from now on.

How can we help?

On the old website this was the ‘Our services’ section, but instead we’ve flipped the title around to ‘How can we help?’ to demonstrate the tailored support our clients receive from us.

It’s a popular area of the site as users anchor themselves in what we offer. Right now there are six sections...

…and you’ll notice each one contains blogs, news and success stories pertinent to that service to further show EEN at work, whilst providing useful content which answers a user need.

Before too long, I expect to release a section called ‘Near me’ which cuts our (blog, adviser and event) content by county.

Partnering opportunities

Brokering international partnering opportunities is our bread and butter, but historically we’d leave users to try to make sense of our internal tagging.

We’ve done away with that, giving us a google-like interface for users to search, filter and sign up to receive email updates.

Before long, I expect to make this filterable content available via a widget that business support and sector websites up and down the land can embed, tailored to their own audiences.

The way in which users ‘register their interest’ is a smoother process too, with users not setting a password if they don’t want to. That is akin to e-commerce websites where users are given the option to register on the site or continue as a guest.

Reusable code

Our code is built on open source technology and is publicly available for reuse, meaning others around the world can use and improve on what we’ve done, rather than need to start from scratch like we did.

Feedback please :o)

Like I say, we have a list of enhancements to steadily release. But it's time to hand the site to users to interact with so we can prioritise those enhancements - and probably discover new ones. Please do use the feedback mechanism (bottom right of the screen) to iron out bugs or suggest enhancements.